This term was used on several of the websites linked here by people uploading or researching classical. It means modern Romantic/classical music, usually 1850-1930, with a "heavy" nature such as stormy large themes and epic scope.

It's the perfect music for metalheads to listen to while tuning their minds for combat and music-making.

It makes metal more meaningful to listen to this music. It's similar in many ways. It's of a longer form. It inspires greater creativity and aiming higher than three-chord "war metal." And it's just plain beautiful... and heavy.

The only thing that really takes getting used to is having a different ear to hear 68+ instruments at once and pick up the sonic range. Listen to it at top volume with surround sound if you can.

Yes, we all know there's another Burzum site, and that Varg Vikernes is sending his writings there because he got mad at Burzum.com's former half-Indian admin. True, things went wrong at Burzum.com in part because of the chaotic personal lives of its staff and in part because of the crowd of morons who came to its mailing list and forums.

But, consider this:- Burzum.com was the original, and its site layout was borrowed by the new site (can't link it here, lol)- Burzum.com gets writings out there are not only by Varg, but about Varg, giving a balanced perspective- Burzum.com forum is now the only intelligent Burzum chat on the net, thanks to our new admin LLD- Burzum.com has always been a site for study and appreciation of Burzum, not fanboyism

Black metal isn't very tolerant. It believes there's one right way to do things and that anyone who thinks otherwise is a fuckup (interesting note, most successful people I meet also think this, but most food service failures do not). Outside of black metal's particular opinions, is it right to be intolerant like this? And if it's not right, is it practical? I can't see how society is going to continue to function when there's no agreement on the direction our future needs to take.

This replicates a lot of what I see in science, philosophy and math. Even if we don't know the right way, it is out there, and if we find it, we're foolish to do anything but pursuing that right way. Is politics a science, or more like creative writing, where you get to have it your own? I've always thought that black metal, and Romanticism, was like politics or philosophy a "master science" of knowing how to think about all other things.

When it came about, it was the most vital genre. Rock had turned into disco and flogging prog like later Yes, which was just terrible. Punk was a breath of fresh air. Five years later, it all sounded alike and people stopped caring at all. It's like a cycle that repeats through history... an idea occurs, then people imitate, then it loses value and all the fans run on to something else.

"One of the earliest rudimentary death metal bands came from Germany, bridging hardcore and simple metal styles on their first work, Hallucinations, but later moving on to a technical masterpiece, Todessehnsucht. Eventually the band ended its life with Blut, which was essentially a fusion of populist genres like hard rock and EBM-styled industrial."

Overlooked by most metalheads as "cheap CASIO-music", but IMO, wrongly so. H418ov21.C is indeed very simplistic, both in melody/harmony, and in structure and rythm. Yet, it's basicness induces profound soundscapes of naturalistic occultism. Its closeness to nature and natural experiences makes this album a spiritual guidance into the realm of perverse and bizarre music of Beherit.

Perhaps some of the most grotesque expressions within metal music ever heard, Beherit launches an array of what best should be characterized as an early stage to later developed (and highly refined) atmospheric occultism through the love to nature and hate to anything that goes against it.

Concerning most of Beherit's other material, chaotic and dissonant ambience gives rise to an inducing idea of something totally non-chaotic and perfectly resembling clarity in soul and feeling. However, this is not the case with the collection of demo songs found on "The Oath of Black Blood" - blasphemic adoration to anything and everything unholy transpires now and then into complete noise and disharmony, although glimpses of future ("improved") visions shine through some of the more professional works by this artist.

Therefore, this album is by any means not recommended - hell - stay as far away as you can from this, as it most likely will tear your internal balance apart and replace it with something wild, untamed, feral and unholy - something beyond what modern passivity can buy into. A chapter, an introduction to the perverse and insane world of a Finish musical mastermind and his idea of using sin as a way of gaining new perspectives - a new love to life and death.

Post-Beherit project by Nuclear Holocausto. Described as "metamusic" by Spinefarm. Indeed, this highly experimental album seems to use metaphysical language in order to describe bizarre functions in the natural order.

It always staggers me, how useless most people are. Even the smart ones. I know this guy at work who is a physicist but can't pay his bills on time, can't cook himself dinner, can't even figure out to change the oil on his car (he just melted a Honda that way). Then I know all the normal people who are just too afraid to admit that their society is collapsing, and the people who want to feel good about themselves for some weird survival of the fittest fantasy. Life sucks but I'm on top. Yay.

It's clear that like society, metal's hitting the shitter. We're seeing so little of quality that it's hard to even care. So the question is, when do we take a stand? We know we can do something, the question is what. I think we have to differentiate metal as a culture and art form so it does not get absorbed. That requires effort that will inconvenience us. But it's better than whining.

I know that if this is like most internet forums, this post will be followed by a bunch of messages filled with doubt. People will tell me that it's too hard, the vision is impossible, that I should just chill out and enjoy the music. But if you believe in something, isn't not fighting for it a form of cowardice?

It's interesting how metal branched. The European side of metal took after Celtic Frost (Hellhammer) and Bathory, but American metal went for what Possessed and Metallica were doing, just more extreme (Slayer). Bathory admits a classical influence, and Celtic Frost went that way as soon as possible with classical vocals and influences. Was American metal more rock? Question for another time.

When I think of examples of classic death metal, I think of the Americans as Morbid Angel and Deicide, and the Europeans as Asphyx and Dismember. The Americans wrote shorter, punchier songs with mathematical structures, but the European stuff was simpler in riff and yet its songs seem to be more like journeys... more like poems... more involved over time, and less impact in the moment.

This interplay benefitted both nations. But for me, some days are clearly European death metal days and other times, usually nights, are better for hauling out the battered copy of Legion.

I was blitzing around this room the other day with Wagner going full blast, taking care of life's details and quests (I can often be found doing this) when a thought hit me: I'd heard something like this before. I spaced out for a bit and at the end of the opera, the CD changed but I barely noticed. I was hearing Asphyx. It fit right in.

These days, I see less difference between the really great death and black metal and the modernist classical pieces. Wagner, Bruckner, DeBussy... they're all very similar and unlike wimpy rock music, they have the same spirit. Go, find the truth, and make it happen. They're warlike and uncompromising.

On the Burzum board, some people were freaking out about the idea that precious Warg was influenced at all by punk music. I think that is because if you've grown up in the last 25 years, "punk" has meant stupid music like Blink 182 that's exactly as sold out as the Rolling Stones. But it's obvious that metal affected punk, and punk affected metal.

Think about the riffs to "Paranoid" or "Symptom of the Universe" by Black Sabbath. Speed it up and simplify it and you have the basic punk riff. They released Paranoid in 1970 or 1971, and it was only six years later that the Sex Pistols were big, and the Sex Pistols were a commercialization of hardcore.

There were hardcore bands through the middle seventies, and some of them were influenced by Motorhead's sound including the vocals. Amebix was in particular enamored of Motorhead and even wrote a Motorhead-style tribute song.

The two genres were not seen as being as far apart as they're seen today back then, possibly because both had character. But hardcore came from metal more than any punker will admit, and the 1976-1982 hardcore changed metal.

Now that black metal has come and gone, people are loath to admit that there was punk in it, but to death metal fans, the music sounded quite punk at first. Impaled Nazarene and Beherit were sometimes referred to as "goth-punk metal." I think the question of punk and metal is far from resolved, even if punk has gone pink these days.

This page divides up Punk into different periods in the UK (where, excepting Iggy Pop and Link Wray in America, it was born):

The Early UK ("Classic") Punk Scene (1976-1980)The Second Wave of UK Punk (1978-1984)The Early Punk Scene in Europe (1976-1980)Oi! (1977-1984)New Wave, No Wave, New York (1975 - 1985)

(When I started the Death thread here, the objective was to take conversation from Audiofile to Talk. Audiofile threads are for downloading, and get deleted when the links expire, so they're a bad place for any persistent discussion! But the Death thread raised more questions than whether or not Chucks' religion allowed him to lie with another man...)

When I think of what founded death metal, a few dates stick out in my mind:

Death got "Scream Bloody Gore" out in 1988 and Morbid Angel got "Abominations of Desolation" out in 1986. For a comparison, I think Metallica released "Master of Puppets" late in the same or early in the following year.

This means to me that all of these bands hit on roughly the same idea at roughly the same time, although clearly Sodom and Bathory were acting on this idea in 1983-84. One or two year's difference isn't that big of a deal however.

1970s - dark, heavy music with a slice of hippie. Attracted to Satan, but he's still bad. Fear of apocalypse, distrust of flower children's vision.

1980s - dark, heavy, fast, mechanical music (introduce punk and industrial, hybridize). Satan is still bad but he's more powerful than good, so worth exploring. Hates flower children, but still leftist, in part because of nutty rightist leaders in USA and Britain.

1990s - dark, heavy, fast, organic/melodic music (mix with classical, again). Satan is good, good is bad, society is headed to doom. Let's return to the good old days of Rome, Greece, Pagan Europe, National Socialism, all throwbacks. Romantic themes more explicit. Wants flower children dead.

Where to from here? It either has to become an honest cultural movement (hessian.org? maybe) or a larger artistic movement. It has become a "scene" and while that output sucks, it might be the foundation for something better.

Almost like a person going through youth, then getting a clearer vision, then becoming teenage. Not yet old but right now lost in direction. Does it become more like 1970s/1980s or take 1990s further? Former is easy, latter is hard. Time shall tell.

In order to understand why metalheads don’t like to see non-metalheads wearing metal shirts, it’s first necessary to understand the nature of the metal community.

Within the metal scene, there are known, if unspoken rules that govern T-shirts. Let’s say you’re going to see Slayer. Within the regular rock scene, it’s sometimes frowned upon to wear the T-shirt of the band you’re going to see. Not in metal. You can certainly wear a Slayer shirt to a Slayer show – the older it is, the better, of course. If you’re wearing a shirt from their 1986 tour, you’re marking yourself as hardcore. This might actually gain you respect within the crowd. Buying a T-shirt on your way in the door, and immediately putting it on, is kinda lame, though. You have other options, too. I’ll list them in descending order of metal-ness. First, you can prove yourself a master of arcana, by wearing a T-shirt promoting, say, Grip Inc., which is one of drummer Dave Lombardo’s solo projects. If you don’t want to do that, you can wear a T-shirt advertising some other metal band, thus demonstrating allegiance to metal in general. If you’re going to do this, you can gain status by endorsing an obscure but well-regarded band, like Eyehategod or Enslaved. Finally, the lowest thing you can do is wear a shirt that’s not in any way related to metal – one that advertises beer, or the pizza place you drive for when you’re not at shows, or whatever. Most metalheads would say this demonstrates an insufficient commitment to the music.

Listeners who grew up in the indie rock scene should make sure to note the total lack of irony. Metal’s greatest virtue is that it’s an irony-free zone. This doesn’t mean it’s humorless – metalheads can laugh at themselves, and at their favorite bands. Manowar is a perfect example of this. But within the metal community, wearing a band’s T-shirt implies that you actually like that band.

...

Metal is a folk music. It unites a community, expresses that community’s values to itself and represents them to the outside world, and it passes those values and core philosophical concepts on to successive generations of metalheads. Because of this, metal builds canons, and who’s locked out is almost more important than who gets in. Once you’re in, though, you’re in for life, and there’s a direct link between the huge stars and the acts coming up from the underground. In Joe Carducci’s Rock and the Pop Narcotic, he explained it like this:

“The metal underground is far better connected to the metal mainstream because like black and country forms, it is isolated by pop programmers which tends to internally integrate the genre’s scope.”

Once your band’s been cast into the ghetto of Headbanger’s Ball, you discover all kinds of commonalities with acts you might otherwise have ignored, or scorned. Successful metal bands take up-and-comers on the road with them, even when they may not seem, to non-metalhead observers, like an ideal fit – Carducci provided the example of Van Halen hiring Alice In Chains as their opening act, but Mötley Crüe took Anthrax and Megadeth on the road, and Ozzy brought Metallica out on their first major national tour. And speaking of Ozzy, the Ozzfest has done this kind of midwifing on a massive scale for the last ten years. The 2004 Ozzfest lineup featured Lamb Of God, Slayer, Judas Priest and Black Sabbath – three distinct generations of musicians, all supporting one another.

No different from hip-hop, reggae or rai, metal is the voice of a minority. The metal audience is primarily white and working-class men, though the music’s popularity among Latinos is growing rapidly, both through immigration and cultural assimilation. Guys who fix cars or load trucks or stock store shelves for a living need a soundtrack to their lives. They need a music that explains their place in the world to them, even if it’s not good news they’re getting. Metal is psychological armor, a bulwark between metalheads and a hostile world. This is why classic metal songs typically address one of a few major topics: the hero’s journey, the brotherhood of metal, a cathartic poetry of violence, or a particularly class-conscious politics. Yes, metal had a burst of hedonism in the mid to late 1980s, but the bands that abandoned metal’s core values in order to become good-time party acts generally attracted a non-metal audience. Again we return to Rock And The Pop Narcotic, in which Carducci writes,

“The teen male metal audience makes an important distinction between party bands and serious bands. Serious metal bands cede very little to the social world (girls, sex, partying). They detail the arena, as it were; the world one makes his way through, fate, the void – you know, big cool boyish things. Black Sabbath, Rush, Metallica, Alice In Chains are quintessential serious bands; Rolling Stones, Van Halen, Kiss, Aerosmith are party bands.”

The metal bands that climbed the charts in the late 1980s – Bon Jovi, Skid Row, Warrant, Winger, etc. – did so largely by turning their backs on the subject matter detailed in the songs of Black Sabbath and Metallica, and instead chronicling love and loss like every other pop act. The only song I can think of from any of these acts that seems, in retrospect, like an angsty male-oriented metal anthem is Skid Row’s “18 & Life,” and even that’s closer in spirit to the teen-tragedy subgenre of 1950s rock ‘n’ roll – it’s more “Teen Angel” than “Fade To Black.”

In Harris Berger’s book Metal, Rock and Jazz: Perception and the Phenomenology Of Musical Experience, he discusses the fan’s search for guidance through music, but he doesn’t quite get where he starts out to go. Berger asserts, in my view incorrectly, that the politics of metal are primarily inadvertent. He writes that

“While the mostly working-class death metal fans are largely apolitical and could be in no way understood as standard-bearers for class consciousness, they are also sharply aware of the frustrations that everyday life brings to working people.”

Later in the book, he writes,

“In a world with little hope for social change, in a world where class is occluded, the liberating emotional exploration of death metal performances serves genuine needs. And it is not merely the case that metal offers short-term emotional utility at the expense of a long-term obfuscation of class consciousness; anything that helps to liberate the individual might turn out to have progressive consequences.” - well-meaning blogger

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The idealogy of the music is very romantic which means it is a praise of imagination, emotion and fantasy. Another central theme heavy metal obsessed apon is chaos which involves mental illness, confusion, war, hell demons and what not. Bands go at this theme to find excitement within it or deep personal and emotional involvement or it can be the band reflecting on the human condition from the outside. Finally, the prime reason of its controversy is its anti-Jeudo Christian imagery and themes like Satan, hell and evil. Like written earlier, metal bands make songs about evil because it goes back to chaos. Also, Jeudo-Chrisitanity is the very foundation of Western civilization and making negative (or anti) songs about it means it is the ultimate rebellion. She further explains why they make songs about evil to question society what is really profane. Yes, but there are still bands who use satanic imagery simply as a gimmick to look rebellious or simply just having fun being offensive. There are some themes of hedonism themes (sex, drugs, rock & roll etc) as praise or sometimes negative criticism. And some metal bands do start bands to blow off teen angst just like any other type of rock music. But the difference is, heavy metal is against the idea of rebellion to be cool and hip. So, understand there is more to heavy metal music than the old, tired "kill your mother/rape your dog" stereotypes. - Another People's Dictionary

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See, the problem with heavy metal is that it does not lend itself well to Left-Wing causes. Libertarian causes are okay, but Lefty, wuss causes don't translate well.

I mean, as soon as some 'metal' band takes on a Lefty cause they look like idiots.

So, all they really have left is Fun, Oppression a la Libertarian sentiments, Racist subculture crap or Folklore.

TK: Heavy metal is a philosophy and a way of life. Heavy metals states that there are a lot of harsh realities in the world and the way to deal with them is to confront them. Through facing these brutal truths we can triumph over them. Every heavy metal song has gruff vocals that represent the harshness of life and the exultant guitar solo represents triumph over adversity. - athlete

The 17-year-old student who shot his way through his family and a tribal school in northwest Minnesota Monday (March 21), leaving 10 people dead, including himself, was described by a fellow student as a quiet boy who was into goth culture, listened to heavy metal music, wore "a big old black trench coat" and "talked about death all the time." - metal news for idiots

I think this one is going to come back. They can't blame the recent killings on heavy metal, but neurotic societies like to find some bogeyman, or Satan, so they don't have to admit the truth that the society itself is dysfunctional. Our morality is no longer held in common, our people behave like whores, money is all we pursue, our foreign policy is dominated by greed, and when our kids go nuts at the prospect of entering this world, let's blame heavy metal.

It seems to me that heavy metal fans everywhere should respond to this with the truth. Tell them that society's falling apart and heavy metal is one of the few voices that espouses values to be found anywhere. Everyone else is a whore. Shooting them might be kinder.